I THINK WE JUST FOUND THAT MISSING VIAL OF CRAZY PILLS:

Mahmoud Abbas And The Degeneration Of The Palestinian National Movement (Jean Shaoul And Chris Marsden, 16 February 2005, World Socialist Web)

Although Abbas has sought to cultivate Washington’s support by carrying through measures against his own people that the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) long-time leader Yasser Arafat balked at, his present course nevertheless expresses the degeneration of the Palestinian nationalist movement as a whole—a degeneration rooted in the bourgeois character of the PLO itself.

The fundamental perspective of the PLO for the establishment of a Palestinian state has always been based on reaching an agreement with imperialism. This goal has been pursued through two methods—negotiations and the armed struggle. While appearing to be opposed, they have always been essentially complementary. The final aim of the armed struggle has always been a negotiated settlement with imperialism, never the independent mobilisation of working class and peasant masses. In other words, the acceptance by Abbas and the PLO leadership of a ceasefire, and its imposition, does not contradict the logic of the armed struggle but arises organically from it.

The PLO was the most radical of national movements and established a mass popular base amongst broad sections of the Palestinian people due to its determined advocacy of armed struggle against Israel. But in essence its leadership represented the Palestinian bourgeoisie and its interests and not those of the masses, as it professed. National bourgeois organisations, however radical, are organically incapable of consistently leading an independent struggle against imperialism along a progressive and democratic route because their interests are, in the final analysis diametrically opposed to those of the working class and peasantry.

Whereas the Palestinian working class and peasantry saw the establishment of a national entity from the standpoint of reclaiming the land stolen since 1948 and ending oppression by imperialism and Zionism, the essential aim of the Palestinian bourgeoisie in its conflict with Israel is to establish its own class rule—which centres on its right to exploit the working class. As such its opposition to imperialism is always conditional and partial. Its aim is not to end imperialist domination, but to establish its own relations with the major imperialist powers that dominate the global economic order. At all times it seeks to oppose any independent political action by the working class that would threaten the basis of capitalist rule. Hence, even in its most radical period, the PLO insisted that it was recognised as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” and that its perspective for establishing a Palestinian state on the basis of capitalist property relations was unchallenged.

On this basis it was never possible to resolve the problems of national oppression and social exploitation.

What good is peace, freedom, and economic development for the Palestinians if we don't get our revolution?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 18, 2005 2:08 PM